1. Field of Invention
The present invention is a novel cross-sectional profile of the neck of a stringed instrument such as a guitar or bass. The design of the neck profile increases the efficiency of the tendon system of the hands, wrists and arms, thereby reducing the risk for the musician to develop the repetitive strain injuries to which guitar and bass players are prone.
2. Description of Related Art
A guitar typically has two main components, a neck and a body. The musician squeezes the strings of the guitar against frets that are on the neck in order to change intonations of the strings. The design of the neck is therefore an important part of the guitar's performance and ergonomics.
The neck is sometimes manufactured as a separate part that is bolted on to the body portion, sometimes the neck is glued to the body, and sometimes, the neck is manufactured from a piece that is an integral part of the body. FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of a so called bolt-on neck. The cross section of a conventional guitar neck most commonly describes a semi-circle as depicted in FIG. 2. As a matter of preference, musicians choose a flatter or rounder, thinner or thicker profile.
When the musician plays the instrument, the thumb or palm of the hand presses against the rear portion (4) of the neck depicted in FIG. 2 while the fingers press the strings against the fingerboard (3). The semi-circular shape allows placement of the thumb at any place along the section. Pushing the thumb or palm against this semi-circular is inherently unstable and muscles in the thumb, palm, forearm and upper arm are all engaged. The hand constantly adjusts, attempting to maintain balance on this small contact area. The spacing between the strings of most stringed instruments increases from the distal end to the proximal end, in order to allow more room to pluck the strings near the proximal end. Because of this generally increasing spacing, the embodiments herein are shown with a wider cross section at the proximal end, but this should not limit the invention to neck shapes with different widths of the distal and proximal end.
A profile that supports the muscles of the hand better than the conventional shape is depicted in FIG. 3. This shape is depicted in prior art U.S. Design Pat. No. D630,676, and a variant as in FIG. 4 is depicted in U.S. Design Pat. No. D635,182. These neck profiles allow the musician to play more relaxed by providing a larger and more stable contact area for the thumb, and thereby preventing injury of the tendons in fingers and hands, and allowing the musician to play longer and faster.
An area which is not addressed in the previously discussed prior art is relieving tension of the muscles in the wrist. To change the intonation of the strings, the musician will press the strings against the fingerboard at varying locations along the length of the neck. Often, multiple strings are depressed at the same time in patterns to form chord voicings. Forming these chord voicings at different locations of the neck affects the angle of the wrist acutely, often requiring the musician to bend the wrist at a sharp angle when playing at the distal end 1 of the neck in FIG. 1 while having a more relaxed angle at the proximal end 2 of the neck in FIG. 1.
There is prior art for a solution that addresses providing a more relaxed angle of the wrist throughout the range of play in U.S. Pat. No. 6,034,308, which describes twisting the neck along its axis, providing a 5°-65° rotation of the distal end (5) in FIG. 5 compared to the point where the strings are anchored in the body, leaving the proximal end (6) parallel in relation to the body or at some angle. This solution, however, is a radical departure from common construction techniques, is complex to manufacture and does not allow many common maintenance operations using standard tools or knowledge.
Lastly in the prior art, U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,450 describes a way to position the frets, which provide fixed intonation positions on which the strings can be depressed, in a “fan” shape that provides sonic advantages. Such a fanned layout, however more subtle than what is described in the prior art, of the frets is depicted in FIG. 6. The result of fanning the layout of the frets is that each string has its own scale length. Depending on the size of the musician and the playing style, a difference in scale length between the longest and the shortest scale of no less than 12 mm and no more than 37 mm can affect the wrist angle of the musician in a positive way throughout the range of play.